A Private Venus by Giorgio Scerbanenco Read Free Book Online Page B

would need refuelling again before he lapsed into another depressive state.
    ‘We’re going.’ He gave Sara back to his sister, completely dry.
    ‘When will you be back?’ Lorenza asked.
    ‘Hard to say. I’ll phone you.’ In the car he said to Davide, ‘Hold on a while longer. We’re going to the barber now, then we’ll go to a good bar near here.’ Davide smiled, and gave a little nod of gratitude. At the barber’s Duca had a shave, too. They sat next to each other, and in the mirror he saw Davide half close his eyes every now and again: if he fell asleep it would be a blessing.
    He fell asleep.
    ‘Psst.’ Duca spoke under his breath to the barber. ‘We’ve been driving all night, he’s tired and not feeling very well. Let him sleep, at least until it gets busy.’
    ‘It won’t get busy today.’ The barber was an understanding man, a man who’d seen everything: he left Davide with lather on half his face and lit a cigarette.
    Duca had his own hair cut by the barber’s assistant, a young man from Como who, unlike the barber, had seen nothing and had never predicted, among the many events that might occur in the world, the possibility of a man falling asleep at the barber’s, although, he said in a low voice, he himself had once fallen asleep in a café in Como, which was so unlike him that he would remember it for the rest of his life.
    With his hair cut and his beard shaved, he started talking to the old barber, looking every now and again at his watch and every now and again at Davide: every minute that passed was a minute less to drink alcohol and a minute more to get reorganised. Perhaps he would sleep until midday, but at 10:15 an old customer came in, a noisy Milanese, the very kind who finds so much success on television, a thin bony man, vaguely hateful for his vulgarity and his wine-red face, who yelled out a Fascist slogan as he entered.
    So Davide woke up, realised that he had been asleep, and on the cheek that was free of lather Duca could see the red mark, but the old barber knew his job, he was ready, he finished shaving him and they left.
    ‘Sorry I took you there,’ Duca said, ‘your usual hairdresser’smay be a more pleasant place.’ He got no answer. He pulled up outside a bar in the Via Plinio. ‘This is the best bar in the area. Order whatever you like.’
    He didn’t look at Davide as he drank a double whisky, but only said, ‘Drink slowly, I’m not in any hurry.’
    The sleep and the whisky had revived Davide a little. Back in the car, he said, ‘I must be quite a burden to you.’
    ‘A bit,’ Duca said, driving. ‘But I like you.’ Reaching the Piazza Cavour, he turned into the Via Fatebenefratelli, and parked in the Via dei Giardini. ‘Wait for me here. I have to go to Police Headquarters. I’ll leave the car keys, but remember what I told you this morning: don’t do anything stupid as long as I’m with you. If you’re not here when I get back, I’ll come looking for you, and I hope for your sake I find you already dead, because I don’t rate your chances if I find you alive. And don’t start drinking again.’
    Davide nodded his head several times, without smiling. He would be there when Duca got back: he was an honest young man.
    As Duca entered Headquarters, the memory of his father hit him like a punch, and a black veil fell over him. Whenever, as a boy, he had come in with his father through that door, crossed that courtyard, climbed those stairs, walked through that corridor and, in the little room, not much more than a cubbyhole, that his father called an office, his father raised his left arm when he could, in other words, not very much after the stab wound he’d got in Sicily, and pointed to the chair, as if it actually was a chair rather than a little bench with a plank as a back and said to him, ‘Sit there and study,’he would place on his knees the schoolbook that his father had told him to bring, and start to read and reread, and when he